“We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.” — Bram Stoker, author, Dracula
\On an overcast autumn Sunday afternoon in Bucharest, Romania, the fourth set had ended. Usually when this happens, the player who’s leveled the match is eager to charge forward, the loser of the set keen to slow down. Here, desires were reversed.
It was Oct. 15, 1972. This was the fourth rubber of the Davis Cup final, between the United States and Romania. America led 2–1, one set from winning the precious Cup for the fifth straight year.. Romania, runner-up a year earlier and also in 1969, hoped to at last earn a breakthrough victory that would likely be the greatest athletic achievement in that nation’s history.